Wherein Max Runs in the Rain

It’s been almost a year now. There have been high points and low points, probably both higher and lower than ever before. At one point I even thought I was a different person, that I could be someone different than I had always been before. But then, of course, I fell back into myself, gravitated back to the heaviest and densest center I know. The hole at the very heart.

And hey, let’s face it: there is a certain comfort to familiarity. No matter how long it’s been, no matter how much you wish something else was more familiar, nothing presses that most-inside button quite like the familiar can. As I ran from the corner DD to my studio the sun vaporized a path through the clouds ahead of me and I had to squint through the glistening droplets while my boots splashed through the lakes forming along the sidewalk. My legs moved in sync with the oh-so-reliable bass drum in my headphones and I felt lighter than I had in months. The mixture of chemicals in my body finally felt balanced and though I could still feel pain and doubt in every crevice of my insides, I could suddenly remember how much I understood that sensation and how much stronger I felt when surrounded by thoughts I could understand. Familiar voices beckoned me towards their large dark embraces, and like garlic skins, the things I had come to believe over the last 12 months peeled and floated away.

Home may be where you rest your head, but it is not necessarily what holds your heart. She showed me that. I might still go home to her at the end of the day but it would take years to become as familiar to her as the everyone and everything that came before me or try to explain to her why this all feels familiar to me. Maybe more like a lifetime.